THE WONDERFUL RIVER
As the “Knobs”--which is the name given to the high hills back of New
Albany--receded, the day was still young. It was also overcast and cool.
So Ed, who was always studying something, brought his big map up on deck
and, spreading it out, lay down on his stomach to study it. He worked
over it till dinner time, and in the afternoon he spread it out again.
The boys having gathered around him, he said:--
“I say, fellows, we are making a journey that we ought to remember as
long as we live. We are going over a small but important part of the
greatest river system in the world.”
“‘Small but important part,’” said Will, quoting. “Well, I like that.”
“What’s your objection,” said Ed Lowry, for the moment borrowing Irv
Strong’s playful method,--“what’s your objection to my carefully chosen
descriptive adjectives?”
“Well, we’re going over pretty nearly the whole of it, aren’t we?”
“Not by any manner of means,” responded Ed. “We aren’t going over more
than a small fraction of it.”
“Why, the Ohio River alone is thirteen hundred miles long,” said Will;
“I remember that much of my geography; and most of the Mississippi lies
below the mouth of the Ohio, doesn’t it?”
“It’s lucky you’ve passed your geography examinations in the high
school, Will,” said Ed. “Now come here, all you fellows, and take a
look. This map shows the entire system of rivers of which the
Mississippi is the mother. It is the greatest river system in the world.
There is nothing, in fact, to compare it with but the Amazon and its
tributaries, and they have never done anything for mankind, because they
lie almost wholly in an unsettled and uncivilized tropical region that
has no commerce and no need of any, while the Mississippi and its
tributaries have built up an empire. They have in effect _created_ the
better part of this vast country of ours that is feeding the world
and--”
“Oh, come now,” said Irv Strong. “You aren’t writing a composition or an
editorial for the Vevay _Reveille_.” This was in allusion to the fact
that Ed sometimes published “pieces” in the local newspaper.
“Well, no,” said Ed, laughing at his own enthusiasm. “Besides, I’ll come
to all that some other time perhaps. At present I want to give Will some
new ideas about the bigness of our river system. True, the Ohio is
twelve or thirteen hundred miles long, but about half of it lies above
Vevay, so we’re covering only six or seven hundred miles of it. From
Cairo to New Orleans--the part of the Mississippi we shall traverse--is
about one thousand and fifty miles long. So we’re only going to travel
over sixteen or seventeen hundred miles of river. Now there are about
fifteen or sixteen thousand miles of this river system that steamboats
can, and actually do, navigate, and nobody has ever really reckoned the
length of the rest--the parts not navigable. We’re going over only about
one-tenth of the navigable part--one twenty-fifth part perhaps of the
whole.”
By this time the boys were all lying prone around the big map, their
feet radiating in every direction from it, like light-rays from a star.
“See here,” said Ed; “here’s the Tennessee River. It’s a mere tributary
of the Ohio, yet it is about two-thirds as long as the main river. Its
head waters are in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It
starts out through Tennessee and tries, in a stupid sort of fashion, to
find its way to the Gulf of Mexico through Alabama. But it gets
discouraged by the mountains down there, turns back, throws a dash of
water into the face of the state of Mississippi, returns to Tennessee
and travels north clear across that state and Kentucky, and finally in
despair gives up its effort to find the sea and turns the job over to
the Ohio. Look at it on the map!”
“And as if it thought the Tennessee had more than it could do to drain
so great a region,” said Phil, studying the map, “the Cumberland also
went into the business and after pretty nearly paralleling its sister
river for a great many hundreds of miles, fell into the Ohio only a few
miles above the mouth of the Tennessee. The two together are longer than
the Ohio itself.”
“Very decidedly,” said Ed. “And then there are all the other
tributaries of the Ohio,--look at them on the map. Together they again
exceed its total length.”
The boys looked at the map and saw that it was so. Then Ed resumed:--
“But, after all, the Ohio and all its tributaries combined amount to a
very small part of the great system. The lower Mississippi itself from
Cairo to the mouth is almost exactly as long as the Ohio. Then there
are the upper Mississippi,--stretching clear up into Minnesota,--the
Illinois, the Wisconsin, etc., the Missouri and its vast tributaries
flowing from the Rocky Mountains, the Arkansas, the Red River, the
Ouachita, the White, the St. Francis, the Yazoo, the Tallahatchie, the
Sunflower, the Yalobusha--and a score of others, to say nothing of the
vast bayous that connect with the wonderful river down South. Here they
all are on the map. Look!”
The next fifteen minutes were given up to a study of the map, interested
fingers tracing out the rivers, and a continual chatter contributing,
after the manner of boys’ talk, to the general stock of information.
Presently Irv Strong spoke. He had never before in his life been silent
so long.
“I remember, at this stage of the proceedings, the wise remark of our
honored teacher, Mrs. Dupont, that ‘eyes are excellent to see with, but
one interpretative brain means more than many additional pairs of
eyes.’”
“What’s all that got to do with it?” asked Constant. “She was talking
about Darwin and Spencer when she said that. What’s either of them got
to do with this river?”
“Ah, Constant!” said Irv, in mock melancholy. “You grieve me to the
heart. You never will see the inward and spiritual meaning of my outward
and visible quotations. I mean that Ed Lowry has studied out this whole
thing and knows ’steen times more about it and what it means than we
blockheads would find out by studying the map for a dog’s age. I venture
that assertion boldly, without having the remotest notion of what
constitutes a dog’s age. My idea is that we fellows ought to shut up,
though I’m personally not fond of doing that, and let Ed gently distil
into our minds his information about all these things. Let’s have the
benefit of the ‘interpretative brain’!”
“Let’s take a header first,” cried Phil, shedding his clothes again.
“I’ll beat the best of you in a swim around the boat, or if I lose, I’ll
wash the dishes for a whole day.”
And with that he went head foremost overboard, Will and Irv following
him.
When they reappeared on deck, blowing like porpoises and glowing like
boiled lobsters, Ed said:--
“You fellows are regular water-rats; Phil is, anyhow. He’s in this water
half a dozen times a day, no matter how cold the wind is.”
“That’s just it,” said Phil. “The water isn’t anything like so cold as
this October air.” Then, with mock seriousness: “Believe me, my dearly
beloved brother, it is to escape the frigidity of the atmosphere, or, as
it were, to warm myself, that I jump into the river. You were reading a
poem the other day in which the stricken-spirited scribe said:--
‘For my part I wish to enjoy what I can--
A sunset, if only a sunset be near,
A moon such as this if the weather be clear,’
and much else to the like effect. As you read the glittering, golden
words, I said in my soul: ‘Bully for you, oh poet! I’m your man for
those sentiments every time.’ And just now the poet and I agree that
nothing in this world would minister so much to our immediate enjoyment
as to jump off the boat again on the larboard side, dive clear under her
and come up on the starboard. Here goes! Who’s the poet to follow me?”
And overboard the boy went, feet first this time, for after striking the
water and sinking to a safe depth, he must turn himself about and swim
under water for fifty or sixty feet before daring to come to the surface
again.
Nobody tried to perform the feat in emulation of the reckless fellow. It
involved a great many dangers and a still greater many of disagreeable
possibilities such as broken heads, skinned backs, and abraded shins. Of
that I can give my readers full assurance because I’ve done the thing
myself many times, and bear some scars as witnesses of its risks.
But it was Phil’s rule of life never to let anybody “do anything in the
swimming way” that he couldn’t do equally well. He had once seen
somebody dive under a steamboat and come up safely on the other side.
So he straightway dived under the same steamboat and came up safely on
the other side. After that, diving under a flatboat was a mere trifle to
him.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
Prepared expressly for this work under the personal direction of
Lieut.-Col. Alexander McKenzie, Corps of Engineers, U. S. Army.
_Note.--Navigable part of the river in red._]